--- title: "Prodo-typing" type: post url: "https://robotpaper.ai/prodo-typing/" canonical: "https://robotpaper.ai/prodo-typing/" markdown_url: "https://robotpaper.ai/prodo-typing.md" published: "2026-04-21T11:42:21.000+00:00" updated: "2026-10-22T21:57:50.000+00:00" tags: ["AWS", "openclaw"] author: "Roy Osherove" author_links: ["https://robotpaper.ai", "https://x.com/royosherove", "https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/", "https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7", "https://robotpaper.ai/about-roy.md"] description: "Prodo-typing: building a production-shaped prototype in its own cloud account with Loki, my OpenClaw-based builder agent. Brainstorming what that changes." usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original post)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Prodo-typing production-shaped prototype in a separate cloud environment This is all me just brain-storming with myself, and I'd love to hear what people think about this. For background [Loki is a builder agent](https://robotpaper.ai/i-gave-my-agent-its-own-aws-account-and-now-it-codes-deploys-and-debugs-full-stack-apps/) based on openclaw designed to be deployed in its own AWS cloud account with full ownership of it. I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be [building something with lowkey](https://lowkey.run/) (aka loki - I'm still deciding with I like the lowkey name or loki or something better. more on that towards the end). ## You use Loki in prototyping mode: You're building fast but you could build full scale apps. Loki builds the code in the same environment in which it deploys it: an AWS sandbox account (it's a regular account with no other apps in it, really) You could steer Loki to build things in a production-grade design: scale, security, modular architecture, performance, optimizations, full stack. in that way you could technically take loki out of the environment (or keep it as read only) then "graduate" your app into production mode. but really you could open usage to your prototype easily from day one if you really wanted to. Hence the term "prodo-type". a hybrid production-shaped prototype that could relatively easily transform into production facing usage pending whatever steps you wanted to do. ## It's not like "productizing" a prototype. Different from other prototype-to-prod graduations is that those usually require huge rewrites of the codebase or architecture or deployment mechanisms and can take weeks to months to "productize". A "prodotype" should take days/hours/minutes to become production facing. It should already have the properties of a production facing app: scale, security, data residency as needed, resiliency and other "ilities" as might be required. Usually we don't have time to bake those into prototypes, and I feel that loki has changed that for me and the people who use it. ## Building it "production-scale" from the first hour is actually possible with a skilled operator. Because Loki runs inside AWS, it has access to all the AWS services that the worlds' largest apps are built on - so it has all the resiliency, scale, security and residency mechanisms you can build with any app today - all you have to do is ask. Need cloud-front caching, DDOs protections, API gateways, certifications, DNS routing, logins (social or otherwise SSO), low level S3 , any type of AWS or other type of database, any type of EC2 instance to build any app you could really imagine - it's there. ![Chat with Loki proposing an API-only video-transcription architecture on AWS with Cognito, S3, Step Functions and Bedrock](https://robotpaper.ai/content/images/2026/04/image-2.png) ## Skilled Operator - Or it's just a powerful prototype If the person operating Loki does not know how to design well-architected apps, in a secure fashion, Loki will only take it so far. So you won't get production grade apps from that, but you'll get running prototypes for sure with many more abilities that a lovable or base44 will ever give you. ## No MCP required Because Loki is in an AWS account, and we deploy it with builder permissions it is basically the *opposite* deployment model from any agent I've seen to date. It actually has practically unlimited access to the aws account, so it can list, create (and delete!) your s3 buckets, ec2 instance, raise up databases, full pipelines, frontends and anything you can do with AWS cli or AWS APIs. It feels scary at first so I put in a disclaimer that you should use it in a new sandbox account so the worst thing that could happen is extra spend if you ask it to create things and not take care of their lifecycles. > **[Disclaimer: Use of Lowkey Agent](https://lowkey.run/aws)** > Important information from Amazon Web Services about using the Lowkey agent in your AWS account. ## AWS accounts can be prodo-types The entire environment in that account can become a full blown new feature or application, only a dns redirect away from being usable in the world. ## Feature flags are prodo-types. In a way developing a new feature in your app and hiding it under a feature flag is a form of prodo-typing - the prototype is minutes away from being production facing. The difference is that loki usually works in a full blown separate aws account. you COULD hide features under feature flags but realistically the AWS account is the feature flag. ## API versions are prodo-types. If you develop an API in a production env as a new version of an api , I think that could be a prodotype. ## Choosing a name for Loki Maybe I should called it "prodo"? or "prodotype" thoughts are welcome on comments here or by [contacting me](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeYih1UWrTcE3vleojz_JkKed7lBdEQ0du2HFlScviHtJQkuQ/viewform) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove** - Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: [https://x.com/royosherove](https://x.com/royosherove) - LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/) ### Contact - Contact form: [https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7](https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7) ### License Content on robotpaper.ai is licensed under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/): reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original post). More about Roy and his other sites and projects: [https://robotpaper.ai/about-roy.md](https://robotpaper.ai/about-roy.md)